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The first battle between ironclads: CSS

Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862

at the Battle of Hampton Roads

Ironclad warshipFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An ironclad was a steam-propelled warship in the earlypart of the second half of the 19th century, protected by

iron or steel armour plates.[1] The ironclad wasdeveloped as a result of the vulnerability of woodenwarships to explosive or incendiary shells. The firstironclad battleship, La Gloire, was launched by the

French Navy in November 1859.[2] The BritishAdmiralty had been considering armored warships since1856 and prepared a draft design for an armoredcorvette in 1857; however, in early 1859 the RoyalNavy started building two iron-hulled armored frigates,and by 1861 had made the decision to move to an all-armored battle fleet. After the first clashes of ironclads(both with wooden ships and with one another) tookplace in 1862 during the American Civil War, it becameclear that the ironclad had replaced the unarmored shipof the line as the most powerful warship afloat. This type of ship would come to be very successful in the

American Civil War.[3]

Ironclads were designed for several roles, including as high seas battleships, coastal defense ships, and long-range cruisers. The rapid evolution of warship design in the late 19th century transformed the ironclad from awooden-hulled vessel that carried sails to supplement its steam engines into the steel-built, turreted battleshipsand cruisers familiar in the 20th century. This change was pushed forward by the development of heavier navalguns (the ironclads of the 1880s carried some of the heaviest guns ever mounted at sea), more sophisticatedsteam engines, and advances in metallurgy which made steel shipbuilding possible.

The rapid pace of change in the ironclad period meant that many ships were obsolete as soon as they werecomplete, and that naval tactics were in a state of flux. Many ironclads were built to make use of the ram or thetorpedo, which a number of naval designers considered the crucial weapons of naval combat. There is no clearend to the ironclad period, but towards the end of the 1890s the term ironclad dropped out of use. New shipswere increasingly constructed to a standard pattern and designated battleships or armored cruisers.

Contents

1 Before the ironclad

1.1 Steam propulsion

1.2 Explosive shells

1.3 Iron armor

2 Early ironclad ships and battles2.1 First battles between ironclads: the U.S. Civil War

2.2 Lissa: First fleet battle

3 Armament and tactics

3.1 Ram craze

3.2 Development of naval guns

3.3 Positioning of armament

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Le Napoléon (1850), the first steam

battleship

3.3.1 Broadside ironclads3.3.2 Turrets, batteries and barbettes

3.4 Torpedoes

4 Armor and construction

4.1 Hulls: iron, wood and steel

4.2 Armor and protection schemes

5 Propulsion: steam and sail

6 Fleets

6.1 Navies

7 End of the ironclad

7.1 Legacy

8 Today9 Notes

10 Bibliography

11 External links

Before the ironclad

The ironclad became technically feasible and tactically necessary because of developments in shipbuilding in thefirst half of the 19th century. According to naval historian J. Richard Hill: "The (ironclad) had three chiefcharacteristics: a metal-skinned hull, steam propulsion and a main armament of guns capable of firing explosiveshells. It is only when all three characteristics are present that a fighting ship can properly be called an

ironclad."[4] Each of these developments was introduced separately in the decade before the first ironclads.

Steam propulsion

In the 18th and early 19th centuries fleets had relied on two types ofmajor warship, the ship of the line and the frigate. The first majorchange to these types was the introduction of steam power forpropulsion. While paddle steamer warships had been used from the1830s onwards, steam propulsion only became suitable for major

warships after the adoption of the screw propeller in the 1840s.[5]

Steam-powered screw frigates were built in the mid-1840s, and atthe end of the decade the French Navy introduced steam power to itsline of battle. The desire for change came from the ambition ofNapoleon III to gain greater influence in Europe, which required a

challenge to the British at sea.[6][7] The first purpose-built steam

battleship was the 90-gun Le Napoléon in 1850.[5] Le Napoléonwas armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam enginescould give her a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h), regardless of the wind conditions: a potentially decisive advantagein a naval engagement.

The introduction of the steam ship-of-the-line led to a building competition between France and Britain. Eightsister-ships to Le Napoléon were built in France over a period of ten years, but the United Kingdom soonmanaged to take the lead in production. Altogether, France built ten new wooden steam battleships and

converted 28 from older ships of the line, while the United Kingdom built 18 and converted 41.[5]

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A Paixhans naval shell gun. 1860

engraving.

French Navy ironclad floating battery

Lave, 1854. This ironclad, together

with the similar Tonnante and

Dévastation, vanquished Russian land

batteries at the Battle of Kinburn

(1855).

Explosive shells

Further information: Paixhans gun

The era of the wooden steam ship-of-the-line was brief, because ofnew, more powerful naval guns. In the 1820s and 1830s, warshipsbegan to mount increasingly heavy guns, replacing 18- and 24-pounder guns with 32-pounders on sailing ships-of-the-line andintroducing 68-pounders on steamers. Then, the first shell guns firingexplosive shells were introduced following their development by theFrench Général Henri-Joseph Paixhans, and by the 1840s were partof the standard armament for naval powers including the FrenchNavy, Royal Navy, Imperial Russian Navy and United States Navy.It is often held that the power of explosive shells to smash woodenhulls, as demonstrated by the Russian destruction of a Turkish

squadron at the Battle of Sinope, spelled the end of the wooden-hulled warship.[8] The more practical threat towooden ships was from conventional cannon firing red-hot shot, which could lodge in the hull of a wooden shipand cause a fire or ammunition explosion. Some navies even experimented with hollow shot filled with molten

metal for extra incendiary power.[9]

Iron armor

Main article: Floating battery

Following the demonstration of the power of explosive shells againstwooden ships at the Battle of Sinop, and fearing that his own shipswould be vulnerable to the Paixhans guns of Russian fortifications inthe Crimean War, Emperor Napoleon III ordered the development oflight-draft floating batteries, equipped with heavy guns and protected

by heavy armor.[10] Experiments made during the first half of 1854proved highly satisfactory, and on 17 July 1854, the Frenchcommunicated to the British Government that a solution had beenfound to make gun-proof vessels and that plans would be

communicated.[11] After tests in September 1854, the BritishAdmiralty agreed to build five armoured floating batteries on the

French plans,[11] establishing the important Thames and Millwall IronWorks within the docks.

The French floating batteries were deployed in 1855 as a supplementto the wooden steam battle fleet in the Crimean War. The role of thebattery was to assist unarmored mortar and gunboats bombardingshore fortifications. The French used three of their ironclad batteries (Lave, Tonnante and Dévastation) in1855 against the defenses at the Battle of Kinburn (1855) on the Black Sea, where they were effective against

Russian shore defences. They would later be used again during the Italian war in the Adriatic in 1859.[12] The

British floating batteries Glatton and Meteor arrived too late to participate to the action at Kinburn.[13] TheBritish planned to use theirs in the Baltic Sea against Kronstadt, and may have been influential in causing theRussians to sue for peace.[2] However, Kronstadt was widely regarded as the most heavily-fortified navalarsenal in the world throughout most of the 19th-century, continually upgrading its combined defences to meetnew changes in technology. Even as the British armoured-batteries were readied against Kronstadt in early1856, the Russians had already constructed newer networks of outlying forts, mortar batteries of their own, and

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The French ironclad floating batteries

Lave, Tonnante and Dévastation in

frontline action at the Battle of

Kinburn (1855).

Model of the French La Gloire

(1858), the first ocean-going ironclad

HMS Warrior (1860), Britain's first

seagoing ironclad warship

submarine mines against which the British had no system for removing

under fire.[14]

The batteries have a claim to the title of the first ironclad warships[4]

but they were capable of only 4 knots (7 km/h) under their ownpower: they operated under their own power at the Battle of

Kinburn,[15] but had to be towed for long range transit.[16] They werealso arguably marginal to the work of the navy. The brief success ofthe floating ironclad batteries convinced France to begin work on

armored warships for their battlefleet.[14]

Early ironclad ships and battles

By the end of the 1850s it was clear that France was unable to matchBritish building of steam warships, and to regain the strategic initiativea dramatic change was required. The result was the first ocean-going

ironclad, the La Gloire, begun in 1857 and launched in 1859.[17]

La Gloire's wooden hull was modelled on that of a steam ship of theline, reduced to one deck, sheathed in iron plates 4.5 inches(110 mm) thick. She was propelled by a steam engine, driving a singlescrew propeller for a speed of 13 knots (24 km/h). She was armedwith thirty-six 6.4-inch (160 mm) rifled guns. France proceeded toconstruct 16 ironclad warships, including two more sister ships to LaGloire, and the only two-decked broadside ironclads ever built,

Magenta and Solferino.[18]

The Royal Navy had not been keen to sacrifice its advantage in steamships of the line, but was determined that the first British ironcladwould outmatch the French ships in every respect, particularly speed.A fast ship would have the advantage of being able to choose a rangeof engagement which could make her invulnerable to enemy fire. TheBritish specification was more a large, powerful frigate than a ship-of-the-line. The requirement for speed meant a very long vessel, whichhad to be built from iron. The result was the construction of twoWarrior class ironclads; HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince. Theships had a successful design, though there were necessarilycompromises between 'sea-keeping', strategic range and armour

protection; their weapons were more effective than that of La Gloire, and with the largest set of steam engines

yet fitted to a ship they could steam at 14.3 knots (26.5 km/h).[14] Yet the Gloire and her sisters had full iron-armour protection along the waterline and the battery itself. Warrior and Black Prince (but also the smallerDefence and Resistance) were obliged to concentrate their armour in a central 'citadel' or 'armoured box',leaving many main deck guns and the fore and aft sections of the vessel unprotected. Iron hulls also requiredmore intensive repair time in dockyards worldwide—which the Royal Navy was not prepared for by the 1860s.Easily-fouled iron hulls could not be coppered like the French wooden hulls because of a corrosive reaction.Nevertheless, as a symbol of Britain's industrial, financial and maritime capabilities and potential at least, theWarrior class ironclads were in many respects the most powerful warships in the world, but were soonrendered obsolete by rapid advances in naval technology which did not necessarily favour the richest or most'maritime' powers.

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Officers of a monitor-class warship,

probably USS Patapsco,

photographed during the American

Civil War.

United States Navy ironclads off

Cairo, Illinois, during the American

Civil War.

By 1862, navies across Europe had adopted ironclads. Britain and France each had sixteen either completed orunder construction, though the British vessels were larger. Austria, Italy, Russia, and Spain were also building

ironclads.[19] However, the first battles using the new ironclad ships involved neither Britain nor France, andinvolved ships markedly different from the broadside-firing, masted designs of La Gloire and Warrior. The useof ironclads by both sides in the American Civil War, and the clash of the Italian and Austrian fleets at the Battleof Lissa, had an important influence on the development of ironclad design.

First battles between ironclads: the U.S. Civil War

The first use of ironclads in action came in the U.S. Civil War. TheU.S. Navy at the time the war broke out had no ironclads, its most

powerful ships being six steam-powered unarmoured frigates.[20]

Since the bulk of the Navy remained loyal to the Union, theConfederacy sought to gain advantage in the naval conflict byacquiring modern armored ships. In May 1861, the ConfederateCongress voted that $2 million be appropriated for the purchase ofironclads from overseas, and in July and August 1861 theConfederacy started work on construction and converting wooden

ships.[21]

On 12 October 1861, the CSS Manassas became the first ironcladto enter combat, when she fought Union warships on the Mississippiduring the Battle of the Head of Passes. She had been converted froma commercial vessel in New Orleans for river and coastal fighting. InFebruary 1862, the larger CSS Virginia (Merrimack) joined theConfederate Navy, having been rebuilt at Norfolk. AsUSS Merrimack, Virginia originally was a conventional warshipmade of wood, but she was reconstructed with an iron-coveredcasemate when she entered the Confederate navy. By this time, theUnion had completed seven ironclad gunboats of the City class, andwas about to complete the USS Monitor, an innovative designproposed by the Swedish inventor John Ericsson. The Union was alsobuilding a large armored frigate, the USS New Ironsides, and the

smaller USS Galena.[22]

The first battle between ironclads happened on 9 March 1862, as the armored Monitor was deployed to

protect the Union's wooden fleet from the ironclad ram Virginia and other Confederate warships.[23] In thisengagement, the second day of the Battle of Hampton Roads, the two ironclads repeatedly tried to ram oneanother while shells bounced off their armor. The battle attracted attention worldwide, making it clear that the

wooden warship was now out of date, with the ironclads destroying them easily.[24]

The Civil War saw more ironclads built by both sides, and they played an increasing role in the naval waralongside the unarmored warships, commerce raiders and blockade runners. The Union built a large fleet of fiftymonitors modeled on their namesake. The Confederacy built ships designed as smaller versions of the Virginia,

many of which saw action,[25] but their attempts to buy ironclads overseas were frustrated as European nationsconfiscated ships being built for the Confederacy — especially in Russia, the only country to openly support theUnion through the war. Only CSS Stonewall was completed, and she arrived in American waters just in time

for the end of the war.[26]

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USS Cairo (1861), an example of a

City class ironclad gunboat

Through the remainder of the war, ironclads saw action in the Union's attacks on Confederate ports. SevenUnion monitors, including USS Montauk, as well as two other ironclads, the ironclad frigate New Ironsides anda light-draft Keokuk, participated in the failed attack on Charleston; one was sunk. Two small ironclads, CSSPalmetto State and CSS Chicora participated in the defence of the harbor. For the later attack at Mobile Bay,the Union assembled four monitors as well as 11 wooden ships, facing the CSS Tennessee, the Confederacy's

most powerful ironclad and the gunboats CSS Morgan, CSS Gaines, CSS Selma.[27]

On the western front, the Union built a formidable force of river ironclads, beginning with several convertedriverboats and then contracting engineer James Eads of St. Louis, Missouri to build the "City" class ironclads.These excellent ships were built with twin engines and a central paddle wheel, all protected by an armoredcasement. They had a shallow draft, allowing them to journey up smaller tributaries, and were very well suitedfor river operations. Eads also produced monitors for use on the rivers, the first two of which differed from theocean going monitors in that they contained a paddle wheel (the USS Neosho (1863) and USS Osage (1863)).

Arguably Eads vessels were some of the better ironclads of theWestern Flotilla, but there were a number of other vessels that servedvaliantly with the fleet. All were of varying design, some moresuccessful than others, and some were similar to standard riverboatsbut with armored side-mounted paddle wheels. All were armed withvarious smoothbore and some rifled guns. If nothing else theexperience of the American Civil War and its wild variety ofcompeting ironclad designs, some more successful (or disastrous)than others, confirmed the emerging trade-off or compromisesrequired in applying the latest technological advances in iron armourmanufacture, ship construction and gun design—to name a few—alsogoing on in Europe. There was no such thing as a 'perfect' ironcladwhich could be invincible in every possible encounter; ship duels, standing up to forts, Brown & Blue-wateroperations.

The Union ironclads played an important role in the Mississippi and tributaries by providing tremendous fireupon Confederate forts, installations and vessels with relative impunity to enemy fire. They were not as heavilyarmored as the ocean going monitors of the Union, but they were adequate for their intended use. MoreWestern Flotilla Union ironclads were sunk by torpedoes (mines) than by enemy fire, and the most damaging

fire for the Union ironclads was from shore installations, not Confederate vessels.[28]

Lissa: First fleet battle

The first fleet battle, and the first ocean battle, involving ironclad warships was the Battle of Lissa in 1866.Waged between the Austrian and Italian navies, the battle pitted combined fleets of wooden frigates andcorvettes and ironclad warships on both sides in the largest naval battle between the battles of Navarino and

Tsushima.[29]

The Italian fleet consisted of 12 ironclads and a similar number of wooden warships, escorting transports whichcarried troops intending to land on the Adriatic island of Lissa. Among the Italian ironclads were sevenbroadside ironclad frigates, four smaller ironclads, and the newly built Affondatore — a double-turretted ram.

Opposing them, the Austrian navy had seven ironclad frigates.[29]

The Austrians believed their ships to have less effective guns than their enemy, so decided to engage the Italiansat close range and ram the enemy. The Austrian fleet formed into an arrowhead formation with the ironclads inthe first line, charging at the Italian ironclad squadron. In the melée which followed both sides were frustrated bythe lack of damage inflicted by guns, and by the difficulty of ramming—nonetheless, the effective ramming attack

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The fleets engaging for the Battle of

Lissa

being made by the Austrian flagship against the Italian attracted great attention in following years.[29]

The superior Italian fleet lost its two ironclads, Re d'Italia and Palestro, while the Austrian unarmoured screwtwo-decker Kaiser remarkably survived close actions with four Italian ironclads. The battle ensured thepopularity of the ram as a weapon in European ironclads for many years, and the victory won by Austria

established it as the predominant naval power in the Adriatic.[29]

The battles of the American Civil War and at Lissa were very influential on the designs and tactics of theironclad fleets that followed. In particular, it taught a generation of naval officers the misleading lesson thatramming was the best way to sink enemy ironclads.

Armament and tactics

The adoption of iron armor meant that the traditional naval armamentof dozens of light cannon became useless, since their shot wouldbounce off an armored hull. To penetrate armor, increasingly heavyguns were mounted on ships; nevertheless, the view that ramming wasthe only way to sink an ironclad became widespread. The increasingsize and weight of guns also meant a movement away from the shipsmounting many guns broadside, in the manner of a ship-of-the-line,towards a handful of guns in turrets for all-round fire.

Ram craze

From the 1860s to the 1880s many naval designers believed that thedevelopment of the ironclad meant that the ram was again the mostimportant weapon in naval warfare. With steam power freeing shipsfrom the wind, and armor making them invulnerable to shellfire, theram seemed to offer the opportunity to strike a decisive blow.

The scant damage inflicted by the guns of Monitor and Virginia atBattle of Hampton Roads and the spectacular but lucky success ofthe Austrian flagship Ferdinand Max sinking the Italian Re d'Italia at

Lissa gave strength to the ramming craze.[30] From the early 1870s toearly 1880s most British naval officers thought that guns were about to be replaced as the main naval armamentby the ram. Those who noted the tiny number of ships that had actually been sunk by ramming struggled to be

heard.[31]

The revival of ramming had a significant effect on naval tactics. Since the 17th century the predominant tactic ofnaval warfare had been the line of battle, where a fleet formed a long line to give it the best fire from itsbroadside guns. This tactic was totally unsuited to ramming, and the ram threw fleet tactics into disarray. Thequestion of how an ironclad fleet should deploy in battle to make best use of the ram was never tested in battle,and if it had been, combat might have shown that rams could only be used against ships which were already

stopped dead in the water.[32]

The ram finally fell out of favour in the 1880s, as the same effect could be achieved with a torpedo, with less

vulnerability to quick-firing guns.[33]

Development of naval guns

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Punch cartoon, showing Britannia

dressed in the armour of an ironclad.

Note the ram sticking out of

Britannia's breast plate.Breech-loading 110 pounder

Armstrong gun on HMS

Warrior

The armament of ironclads tended to become concentrated in a smallnumber of powerful guns capable of penetrating the armor of enemyships at range; calibre and weight of guns increased markedly toachieve greater penetration. Throughout the ironclad era navies alsograppled with the complexities of rifled versus smoothbore guns andbreech-loading versus muzzle-loading.

HMS Warrior carried a mixture of110-pounder 7 inch (180 mm)breech-loading rifles and moretraditional 68-pounder smoothboreguns. Warrior highlighted thechallenges of picking the rightarmament; the breech-loaders shecarried, designed by Sir WilliamArmstrong, were intended to be thenext generation of heavy armamentfor the Royal Navy, but were

shortly withdrawn from service.[34]

Breech-loading guns seemed tooffer important advantages. Abreech-loader could be reloadedwithout moving the gun, a lengthy process particularly if the gun then needed

to be re-aimed. The Warrior's Armstrong guns also had the virtue of being lighter than an equivalent

smoothbore and, because of their rifling, more accurate.[34] Nonetheless, the design was rejected because ofproblems which plagued breech-loaders for decades.

The weakness of the breech-loader was the obvious problem of sealing the breech. All guns are powered by theexplosive conversion of gunpowder into gas. This explosion propels the shot or shell out of the front of the gun,but also imposes great stresses on the gun-barrel. If the breech — which experiences some of the greatestforces in the gun — is not entirely secure, then there is a risk that either gas will discharge through the breech orthat the breech will break. This in turn reduces the muzzle velocity of the weapon and can also endanger the guncrew. The Warrior's Armstrong guns suffered from both problems; the shells were unable to penetrate the4.5 in (118 mm) armor of La Gloire, while sometimes the screw which closed the breech flew backwards outof the gun on firing. Similar problems were experienced with the breech-loading guns which became standard in

the French and German navies.[35]

These problems influenced the British to equip ships with muzzle-loading weapons of increasing power until the1880s. After a brief introduction of 100-pounder or 9.5-inch (240 mm) smoothbore Somerset Gun, whichweighed 6.5 tons (6.6 t), the Admiralty introduced 7-inch (178 mm) rifled guns, weighing 7 tons. These werefollowed by a series of increasingly mammoth weapons—guns weighing 12, 25, 25, 38 and finally 81 tons, withcalibre increasing from 8-inch (203 mm) to 16-inch (406 mm).

The decision to retain muzzle-loaders until the 1880s has been criticised by historians. However, at least until thelate 1870s, the British muzzle-loaders had superior performance in terms of both range and rate of fire than theFrench and Prussian breech-loaders, which suffered from the same problems as had the first Armstrong

guns.[36]

From 1875 onwards, the balance between breech- and muzzle-loading changed. Captain de Bange invented amethod of reliably sealing a breech, adopted by the French in 1873. Just as compellingly, the growing size ofnaval guns made muzzle-loading much more complicated. With guns of such size there was no prospect of

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Reloading the muzzle-loading guns of

Duilio

The obturator invented by Charles

Ragon de Bange allowed the effective

sealing of breeches in breech-loading

guns.

hauling in the gun for re-loading, or even re-loading by hand, and complicated hydraulic systems were requiredfor re-loading the gun outside the turret without exposing the crew to enemy fire. In 1882, the 81-ton, 16-inch(406 mm) guns of HMS Inflexible fired only once every 11 minutes

while bombarding Alexandria during the Urabi Revolt.[37] The 100-ton, 450 mm (17.72 inch) guns of Duilio could each fire a round

every 15 minutes.[38]

In the Royal Navy, the switch to breech-loaders was finally made in1879; as well as the significant advantages in terms of performance,opinion was swayed by an explosion on board HMS Thunderercaused by a gun being double-loaded, a problem which could only

happen with a muzzle-loading gun.[39]

The calibre and weight of guns could only increase so far. The largerthe gun, the slower it would be to load, the greater the stresses on theship's hull, and the less the stability of the ship. The size of the gunpeaked in the 1880s, with some of the heaviest calibres of gun everused at sea. HMS Benbow carried two 16.25-inch (413 mm)breech-loading guns, each weighing 110 tons—no British battleshipwould ever carry guns as large. The Italian 450 mm (17.72 inch) gunswould be larger than any gun fitted to a battleship until the 18.1-inch(460 mm) armament of the Japanese Yamato class of World War

II.[40] One consideration which became more acute was that evenfrom the original Armstrong models, following the Crimean War,range and hitting power far exceeded simple accuracy, especially atsea where the slightest roll or pitch of the vessel as 'floating weapons-platform' could negate the advantage of rifling. American ordnanceexperts accordingly preferred smoothbore monsters whose roundshot could at least 'skip' along the surface of the water. Actualeffective combat ranges, they had learned during the Civil War, werecomparable to those in the Age of Sail—though a vessel could nowbe smashed to pieces in only a few rounds. Smoke and the generalchaos of battle only added to the problem. As a result, many navalengagements in the 'Age of the Ironclad' were still fought at rangeswithin easy eyesight of their targets, and well below the maximum reach of their ships' guns.

Another method of increasing firepower was to vary the projectile fired or the nature of the propellant. Earlyironclads used black powder, which expanded rapidly after combustion; this meant cannons had relatively shortbarrels, to prevent the barrel itself slowing the shell. The sharpness of the black powder explosion also meantthat guns were subjected to extreme stress. One important step was to press the powder into pellets, allowing aslower, more controlled explosion and a longer barrel. A further step forward was the introduction of chemicallydifferent "brown powder" which combusted more slowly again. It also put less stress on the insides of the barrel,

allowing guns to last longer and to be manufactured to tighter tolerances.[41]

The development of smokeless powder, based on nitroglycerine or nitrocellulose, by the French inventor PaulVielle in 1884 was a further step allowing smaller charges of propellant with longer barrels. The guns of the pre-Dreadnought battleships of the 1890s tended to be smaller in calibre compared to the ships of the 1880s, mostoften 12 in (305 mm), but progressively grew in length of barrel, making use of improved propellants to gain

greater muzzle velocity.[41]

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The conventional broadside

of 68-pounders on HMS

Warrior of 1860

A barbette of Redoutable of 1876

The nature of the projectiles also changed during the ironclad period. Initially, the best armor-piercing projectilewas a solid cast-iron shot. Later, shot of chilled iron, a harder iron alloy, gave better armor-piercing qualities.

Eventually the armor-piercing shell was developed.[41]

Positioning of armament

Broadside ironclads

The first British, French and Russian ironclads, in a logical development ofwarship design from the long preceding era of wooden ships of the line,carried their weapons in a single line along their sides and so were called

"broadside ironclads."[42][43] Both La Gloire and HMS Warrior wereexamples of this type. Because their armor was so heavy, they could onlycarry a single row of guns along the main deck on each side rather than a row

on each deck.[17]

A significant number of broadside ironclads were built in the 1860s, principallyin Britain and France, but in smaller numbers by other powers including Italy,

Austria, Russia and the United States.[43] The advantages of mounting guns onboth broadsides was that the ship could engage more than one adversary at a

time, and the rigging did not impede the field of fire.[44]

Broadside armament also had disadvantages, which became more serious as ironclad technology developed.Heavier guns to penetrate ever-thicker armor meant that fewer guns could be carried. Furthermore, the

adoption of ramming as an important tactic meant the need for ahead and all-round fire.[45] These problems ledto broadside designs being superseded by designs that gave greater all-round fire, which included central-

battery, turret, and barbette designs.[44]

Turrets, batteries and barbettes

There were two main design options to the broadside. In one design,the guns were placed in an armoured casemate amidships: thisarrangement was called the 'box-battery' or 'centre-battery'. In theother, the guns could be placed on a rotating platform to give them abroad field of fire; when fully armored, this arrangement was called aturret and when partially armored or unarmored, a barbette.

The centre-battery was the simpler and, during the 1860s and 1870s,the more popular method. Concentrating guns amidships meant theship could be shorter and handier than a broadside type. The first full-scale centre-battery ship was HMS Bellerophon of 1865; the Frenchlaid down centre-battery ironclads in 1865 which were not completeduntil 1870. Centre-battery ships often, but not always, had a recessed

freeboard enabling some of their guns to fire directly ahead.[46]

The turret made its debut with USS Monitor in 1862, with a type of turret designed by the Swedish engineerJohn Ericsson. A competing turret design was proposed by the British inventor Cowper Coles. Ericsson's turret

turned on a central spindle, and Coles's turned on a ring of bearings.[41] Turrets offered the maximum arc of firefrom the guns, but there were significant problems with their use in the 1860s. The fire arc of a turret would beconsiderably limited by masts and rigging, so they were unsuited to use on the earlier ocean-going ironclads. The

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Barbette of the French ironclad Vauban

(1882-1905)

second problem was that turrets were extremely heavy. Ericsson was able to offer the heaviest possible turret(guns and armour protection) by deliberately designing a ship with very low freeboard. The weight thus savedfrom having a high broadside above the waterline was diverted to actual guns and armour. Low freeboard,however, also meant a smaller hull and therefore a smaller capacity for coal storage—and therefore range of thevessel. In many respects, the turreted, low-freeboard Monitor and the broadside sailer HMS Warriorrepresented two opposite extremes in what an 'Ironclad' was all about. The most dramatic attempt tocompromise these two extremes, or 'squaring this circle', was designed by Captain Cowper Phipps Coles: HMSCaptain, a dangerously low freeboard turret ship which neverthelesscarried a full rig of sail, and which subsequently capsized not longafter her launch in 1870. Her half-sister Monarch was restricted tofiring from her turrets only on the port and starboard beams. Thethird Royal Navy ship to combine turrets and masts was HMSInflexible of 1876, which carried two turrets on either side of the

centre-line, allowing both to fire fore, aft and broadside.[47]

A lighter alternative to the turret, particularly popular with theFrench navy, was the barbette. These were fixed armored towerswhich held a gun on a turntable. The crew was sheltered from directfire, but vulnerable to plunging fire, for instance from shoreemplacements. The barbette was lighter than the turret, needing lessmachinery and no roof armor—though nevertheless some barbetteswere stripped of their armor plate to reduce the top-weight of their ships. The barbette became widely adoptedin the 1880s, and with the addition of an armored 'gun-house', transformed into the turrets of the pre-

Dreadnought battleships.[41]

Torpedoes

The ironclad age saw the development of explosive torpedoes as naval weapons, which helped complicate thedesign and tactics of ironclad fleets. The first torpedoes were static mines, used extensively in the American CivilWar. That conflict also saw the development of the spar torpedo, an explosive charge pushed against the hull ofa warship by a small boat. For the first time, a large warship faced a serious threat from a smaller one—andgiven the relative inefficiency of shellfire against ironclads, the threat from the spar torpedo was taken seriously.The U.S. Navy converted four of its monitors to become turretless armored spar-torpedo vessels while under

construction in 1864–5, but these vessels never saw action.[48] Another proposal, the towed or 'Harvey'torpedo, involved an explosive on a line or outrigger; either to deter a ship from ramming or to make a torpedoattack by a boat less suicidal.

A more practical and influential weapon was the self-propelled or 'Whitehead' torpedo. Invented in 1868 anddeployed in the 1870s, the Whitehead torpedo formed part of the armament of ironclads of the 1880s likeHMS Inflexible and the Italian Duilio and Dandolo. The ironclad's vulnerability to the torpedo was a key partof the critique of armored warships made by the Jeune Ecole school of naval thought; it appeared that any shiparmored enough to prevent destruction by gunfire would be slow enough to be easily caught by torpedo. Inpractice, however, the Jeune Ecole was only briefly influential and the torpedo formed part of the confusing

mixture of weapons possessed by ironclads.[49]

Armor and construction

The first ironclads were built on wooden or iron hulls, and protected by wrought iron armor backed by thickwooden planking. Ironclads were still being built with wooden hulls into the 1870s.

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The French Redoutable (1876), the

first battleship to use steel as the main

building material

Hulls: iron, wood and steel

Using iron construction for warships offered advantages for the engineering of the hull. However, unarmorediron had many military disadvantages, and offered technical problemswhich kept wooden hulls in use for many years, particularly for long-range cruising warships.

Iron ships had first been proposed for military use in the 1820s. In the1830s and 1840s France, Britain and the United States had allexperimented with iron-hulled but unarmored gunboats and frigates.However, the iron-hulled frigate was abandoned by the end of the1840s, because iron hulls were more vulnerable to solid shot; ironwas more brittle than wood, and iron frames more likely to fall out of

shape than wood.[50]

The unsuitability of unarmored iron for warship hulls meant that ironwas only adopted as a building material for battleships when protected by armor. However, iron gave the navalarchitect many advantages. Iron allowed larger ships and more flexible design, for instance the use of watertightbulkheads on the lower decks. Warrior, built of iron, was longer and faster than the wooden-hulled La Gloire.Iron could be produced to order and used immediately, in contrast to the need to give wood a long period ofseasoning. And, given the large quantities of wood required to build a steam warship and the falling cost of iron,iron hulls were increasingly cost-effective. The main reason for the French use of wooden hulls for the ironcladfleet built in the 1860s was that the French iron industry could not supply enough, and the main reason whyBritain built its handful of wooden-hulled ironclads was to make best use of hulls already started and wood

already bought.[51]

Wooden hulls continued to be used for long-range and smaller ironclads, because iron nevertheless had asignificant disadvantage. Iron hulls suffered quick fouling by marine life, slowing the ships down—manageablefor a European battlefleet close to dry docks, but a difficulty for long-range ships. The only solution was tosheath the iron hull first in wood and then in copper, a laborious and expensive process which made wooden

construction remain attractive.[52] Iron and wood were to some extent interchangeable: the Japanese Kongoand Hiei ordered in 1875 were sister-ships, but one was built of iron and the other of composite

construction.[53]

After 1872, steel started to be introduced as a material for construction. Compared to iron, steel allows forgreater structural strength for a lower weight. The French Navy led the way with the use of steel in its fleet,

starting with the Redoutable, laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876.[54] Redoutable nonetheless had wroughtiron armor plate, and part of her exterior hull was iron rather than steel.

Even though Britain led the world in steel production, the Royal Navy was slow to adopt steel warships. TheBessemer process for steel manufacture produced too many imperfections for large-scale use on ships. Frenchmanufacturers used the Siemens-Martin process to produce adequate steel, but British technology lagged

behind.[55] The first all-steel warships built by the Royal Navy were the dispatch vessels Iris and Mercury, laiddown in 1875 and 1876.

Armor and protection schemes

Iron-built ships used wood as part of their protection scheme. HMS Warrior was protected by 4.5 in(114 mm) of wrought iron backed by 15 in (381 mm) of teak, the strongest shipbuilding wood. The woodplayed two roles, preventing spalling and also preventing the shock of a hit damaging the structure of the ship.

Later, wood and iron were combined in 'sandwich' armor, for instance in HMS Inflexible.[56]

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The iron-and-wood armor of

HMS Warrior

La Gloire under sail

Steel was also an obvious material for armor. It was tested in the 1860s, but the steel of the time was too brittleand disintegrated when struck by shells. Steel became practical to use when a way was found to fuse steel ontowrought iron plates, giving a form of compound armor. This compound armor was used by the British in shipsbuilt from the late 1870s, first for turret armor (starting with HMS Inflexible)

and then for all armor (starting with Colossus of 1882).[57] The French andGerman navies adopted the innovation almost immediately, with licenses being

given for the use of the 'Wilson System' of producing fused armor.[58]

The first ironclads to have all-steel armor were the Italian Duilio andDandolo. Though the ships were laid down in 1873 their armor was notpurchased from France until 1877. The French navy decided in 1880 to adoptcompound armor for its fleet, but found it limited in supply, so from 1884 the

French navy was using steel armor.[58] Britain stuck to compound armor until1889.

The ultimate ironclad armor was case hardened nickel-steel. In 1890, the U.S. Navy tested steel armorhardened by the Harvey process and found it superior to compound armor. For several years 'Harvey steel' wasthe state of the art, produced in the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, Austria and Italy. In 1894, the German firmKrupp developed gas cementing, which further hardened steel armor. The German Kaiser Friedrich III, laiddown in 1895, was the first ship to benefit from the new 'Krupp armor' and the new armor was quicklyadopted; the Royal Navy using it from HMS Canopus, laid down in 1896. By 1901 almost all new battleshipsused Krupp armor, though the U.S. continued to use Harvey armor alongside until the end of the decade.

The equivalent strengths of the different armor plates was as follows: 15 in (381 mm) of wrought iron wasequivalent to 12 in (305 mm) of either plain steel or compound iron and steel armor, and to 7.75 in (197 mm) of

Harvey armor or 5.75 in (146 mm) of Krupp armor.[59]

Ironclad construction also prefigured the later debate in battleship design between tapering and 'all-or-nothing'armour design. Warrior was only semi-armoured, and could have been disabled by hits on the bow and

stern.[60] As the thickness of armor grew to protect ships from the increasingly heavy guns, the area of the shipwhich could be fully protected diminished. Inflexible's armor protection was largely limited to the central citadelamidships, protecting boilers and engines, turrets and magazines, and little else. An ingenious arrangement ofcork-filled compartments and watertight bulkheads was intended to keep her stable and afloat in the event of

heavy damage to her un-armored sections.[61]

Propulsion: steam and sail

The first ocean-going ironclads carried masts and sails like theirwooden predecessors, and these features were only graduallyabandoned. Early steam engines were inefficient; the wooden steam

fleet of the Royal Navy could only carry "5 to 9 days coal",[62] andthe situation was similar with the early ironclads. Warrior alsoillustrates two design features which aided hybrid propulsion; she hadretractable screws to reduce drag while under sail (though in practicethe steam engine was run at a low throttle), and a telescopic funnel

which could be folded down to the deck level.[63]

Ships designed for coastal warfare, like the floating batteries of theCrimea, or USS Monitor and her sisters, dispensed with masts from the beginning. The British HMSDevastation, started in 1869, was the first large, ocean-going ironclad to dispense with masts. Her principalrole was for combat in the English Channel and other European waters; and while her coal supplies gave her

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French armoured floating battery

Arrogante (1864).

Inflexible, after the replacement of

her sailing masts with 'military masts'

enough range to cross the Atlantic, she would have had little endurance on the other side of the ocean. TheDevastation and the similar ships commissioned by the British and Russian navies in the 1870s were theexception rather than the rule. Most ironclads of the 1870s retained masts, and only the Italian navy, whichduring that decade was focused on short-range operations in the

Adriatic,[64] built consistently mastless ironclads.[65]

During the 1860s, steam engines improved with the adoption ofdouble-expansion steam engines, which used 30–40% less coal thanearlier models. The Royal Navy decided to switch to the double-expansion engine in 1871, and by 1875 they were widespread.However, this development alone was not enough to herald the end ofthe mast. Whether this was due to a conservative desire to retain sails,or was a rational response to the operational and strategic situation, isa matter of debate. A steam-only fleet would require a network ofcoaling stations worldwide, which would need to be fortified at greatexpense to stop them falling into enemy hands. Just as significantly,because of unsolved problems with the technology of the boilerswhich provided steam for the engines, the performance of double-expansion engines was rarely as good in practice as it was in

theory.[66]

During the 1870s the distinction grew between 'first-class ironclads'or 'battleships' on the one hand, and 'cruising ironclads' designed forlong-range work on the other. The demands on first-class ironcladsfor very heavy armor and armament meant increasing displacement,which reduced speed under sail; and the fashion for turrets andbarbettes made a sailing rig increasingly inconvenient. HMSInflexible, launched in 1876 but not commissioned until 1881, wasthe last British battleship to carry masts, and these were widely seenas a mistake. The start of the 1880s saw the end of sailing rig on

ironclad battleships.[62]

Sails persisted on 'cruising ironclads' for much longer. During the1860s, the French navy had produced the Alma and La

Galissoniere classes as small, long-range ironclads as overseas cruisers[67] and the British had responded withships like Swiftsure of 1870. The Russian ship General Admiral, laid down in 1870 and completed in 1875,was a model of a fast, long-range ironclad which was likely to be able to outrun and outfight ships likeSwiftsure. Even the later HMS Shannon, often described as the first British armored cruiser, would have beentoo slow to outrun General Admiral. While Shannon was the last British ship with a retractable propellor, laterarmored cruisers of the 1870s retained sailing rig, sacrificing speed under steam in consequence. It took until1881 for the Royal Navy to lay down a long-range armored warship capable of catching enemy commerce

raiders, Warspite, which was completed in 1888.[68] While sailing rigs were obsolescent for all purposes by theend of the 1880s, rigged ships were in service until the early years of the 20th century.

The final evolution of ironclad propulsion was the adoption of the triple-expansion steam engine, a furtherrefinement which was first adopted in HMS Sans Pareil, laid down in 1885 and commissioned in 1891. Manyships also used a forced draught to get additional power from their engines, and this system was widely used

until the introduction of the steam turbine in the mid-1900s (decade).[69]

Fleets

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While ironclads spread rapidly in navies worldwide, there were few pitched naval battles involving ironclads.Most European nations settled differences on land, and the Royal Navy struggled to maintain a deterrent paritywith at least France, while providing suitable protection to Britain's commerce and colonial outposts worldwide.Ironclads remained, for the British Royal Navy, a matter of defending the British Isles first and projecting powerabroad second. Those naval engagements of the latter half of the 19th-century which involved ironclads normallyinvolved colonial actions or clashes between second-rate naval powers. But these encounters were often enoughto convince British policy-makers of the increasing hazards of strictly naval foreign intervention, from HamptonRoads in the American Civil War to the hardening combined defences of naval arsenals such as Kronstadt andCherbourg.

There were many types of ironclads:[70]

Seagoing ships intended to "stand in the line of battle"; the precursors of the battleship.[71]

Coastal service and riverine vessels, including 'floating batteries' and 'monitors'Vessels intended for commerce raiding or protection of commerce, called 'armoured cruisers'

Navies

The United Kingdom possessed the largest navy in the world for the whole of the ironclad period. The RoyalNavy was the second to adopt ironclad warships, and it applied them worldwide in their whole range of roles.In the age of sail, the British strategy for war depended on the Royal Navy mounting a blockade of the ports ofthe enemy. Because of the limited endurance of steamships, this was no longer possible, so the British at timesconsidered the risk-laden plan of engaging an enemy fleet in harbor as soon as war broke out. To this end, theRoyal Navy developed a series of 'coast-defence battleships', starting with the Devastation class. These'breastwork monitors' were markedly different from the other high-seas ironclads of the period and were an

important precursor of the modern battleship.[72] As long-range monitors they could reach Bermuda unescorted,for example. However, they were still armed with only four heavy guns and were as vulnerable to mines andobstructions (and enemy monitors) as the original monitors of the Union Navy proved to be during the CivilWar. The British prepared for an overwhelming mortar bombardment of Kronstadt by the close of the CrimeanWar, but never considered running the smoke-ridden, shallow-water gauntlet straight to St. Petersburg withironclads. Likewise, monitors proved acutely unable to 'overwhelm' enemy fortifications single-handed duringthe American conflict, though their low-profile and heavy armour protection made them ideal for runninggauntlets. Mines and obstructions, however, negated these advantages; a problem the British Admiraltyfrequently acknowledged but never countered throughout the period. The British never laid down enoughDevastation-class 'battleships' to instantly overwhelm Cherbourg, Kronstadt or even New York City withgunfire. Although throughout the 1860s and 1870s the Royal Navy was still in many respects superior to itspotential rivals, by the early 1880s widespread concern about the threat from France and Germany culminatedin the Naval Defence Act which promulgated the idea of a 'two-power standard', that Britain should possess asmany ships as the next two navies combined. This standard provoked aggressive shipbuilding in the 1880s and

1890s.[73]

British ships did not participate in any major wars in the ironclad period. The Royal Navy's ironclads only sawaction as part of colonial battles or one-sided engagements like the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882.Defending British interests against Ahmed 'Urabi's Egyptian revolt, a British fleet opened fire on the fortificationsaround the port of Alexandria. A mixture of centre-battery and turret ships bombarded Egyptian positions formost of a day, forcing the Egyptians to retreat; return fire from Egyptian guns was heavy at first, but inflicted little

damage, killing only five British sailors.[74] Few Egyptian guns were actually dismounted, on the other hand, andthe fortifications themselves were typically left intact. Had the Egyptians actually utilised the heavy mortars thatwere at their disposal they might have quickly turned the tide, for the attacking British ironclads found it easy (foraccuracy's sake) to simply anchor whilst firing; perfect targets for high-angle fire upon their thinly-armouredtopdecks.

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The Battle of Iquique, where

Peruvian ironclad Huáscar sunk

the Chilean wooden corvette

Esmeralda.

The Loa being fitted after its

conversion in the Callao harbour,

1864

The French navy built the first ironclad to try to gain a strategic advantage over the British, but were consistentlyout-built by the British. Despite taking the lead with a number of innovations like breech-loading weapons andsteel construction, the French navy could never match the size of the Royal Navy. In the 1870s, the constructionof ironclads ceased for a while in France as the Jeune Ecole school of naval thought took prominence,suggesting that torpedo boats and unarmored cruisers would be the future of warships. Like the British, theFrench navy saw little action with its ironclads; the French blockade of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War

was ineffective, as the war was settled entirely on land.[75]

Russia built a number of ironclads, generally copies of British or French designs. Nonetheless, there were realinnovations from Russia; the first true type of ironclad armored cruiser, the General Admiral of the 1870s, anda set of remarkably badly designed circular battleships referred to as 'popoffkas'. The Russian Navy pioneeredthe wide-scale use of torpedo boats during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, mainly out of necessity

because of the superior numbers and quality of ironclads used by the Turkish navy.[76] Russia expanded hernavy in the 1880s and 1890s with modern armored cruisers and battleships, but the ships were manned byinexperienced crews and politically appointed leadership, which enhanced their defeat in the Battle of Tsushima

on 27 May 1905.[77]

The U.S. Navy ended the Civil War with about fifty monitor-type coastalironclads; by the 1870s most of these were laid up in reserve, leaving theUSA virtually without an ironclad fleet. Another five large monitors wereordered in the 1870s. The limitations of the monitor type effectivelyprevented the USA from projecting power overseas, and until the 1890sthe USA would have come off badly in a conflict with even Spain or theLatin American powers. The 1890s saw the beginning of what becamethe Great White Fleet, and it was the modern pre-Dreadnoughts andarmored cruisers built in the 1890s which defeated the Spanish fleet inthe Spanish-American War of 1898. This started a new era of naval

warfare.[78]

Ironclads were widely used inSouth America. Both sides used ironclads in the Chincha Islands Warbetween Spain and the combined forces of Peru and Chile in the early1860s. The powerful Spanish Numancia participated in the Battle ofCallao but was unable to inflict significant damage to the Callaodefences. Besides, Peru was able to deploy two locally built ironclads

based on American Civil War designs,[79] the Loa (a wooden shipconverted into a casemate ironclad) and the Victoria (an smallmonitor armed with a single 68 pdr gun), as well as two British-builtironclads; Independencia, a centre-battery ship, and the turret shipHuáscar. Numancia was the first ironclad to circumnavigate theworld, arriving in Cádiz on 20 September 1867, and earning themotto: "Enloricata navis que primo terram circuivit"). In the War of the

Pacific in 1879, both Peru and Chile had ironclad warships, including some of those used a few years previouslyagainst Spain. While the Independencia ran aground early on, the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar made a greatimpact against Chilean shipping, delaying Chilean ground invasion by six months. She was eventually caught bytwo more modern Chilean centre-battery ironclads, the Blanco Encalada and the Almirante Cochrane at the

Battle of Angamos Point.[80]

Ironclads were also used from the inception of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Kōtetsu (Japanese: 甲鉄,literally "Ironclad", later renamed Azuma 東, "East") had a decisive role in the Naval Battle of Hakodate Bay inMay 1869, which marked the end of the Boshin War, and the complete establishment of the Meiji Restoration.

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The Confederacy's French-built

ironclad Cheops (sister ship to the

CSS Stonewall) later the Prussian

navy's "Prinz Adalbert"

The Confederacy's French-built last

ironclad was also Japan's first:

Stonewall was later renamed Kōtetsu.

1904 illustration of H.G. Wells'

December 1903 The Land Ironclads,

showing huge ironclad land vessels,

equipped with pedrail wheels.

The IJN continued to develop its strength and commissioned a number of warships from British and Europeanshipyards, first ironclads and later armored cruisers. These ships engaged the Chinese Beiyang fleet which wassuperior on paper at least at the Battle of the Yalu River. Thanks to superior short-range firepower, theJapanese fleet came off better, sinking or severely damaging eightships and receiving serious damage to only four. The naval war wasconcluded the next year at the Battle of Weihaiwei, where thestrongest remaining Chinese ships were surrendered to the

Japanese.[81]

End of the ironclad

Main article: Battleship

There is no clearly defined end to the ironclad, besides the transitionfrom wood hulls to all metal. Ironclads continued to be used in WorldWar I. Towards the end of the 19th century, the descriptions'battleship' and 'armored cruiser' came to replace the term

'ironclad'.[82]

The proliferation of ironclad battleship designs came to an end in the1890s as navies reached a consensus on the design of battleships,producing the type known as the pre-Dreadnought. These ships aresometimes covered in treatments of the ironclad warship. The nextevolution of battleship design, the dreadnought, is never referred to as

an 'ironclad'.[83]

Most of the ironclads of the 1870s and 1880s served into the 1900s(decade). A handful, for instance US navy monitors laid down in the1870s, saw active service in World War I. Pre-Dreadnoughtbattleships and cruisers of the 1890s saw widespread action in WorldWar I and in some cases through to World War II.

Legacy

The example of the ironclads had some bearing on the history of thetank, as ironclad warships became an inspiration for ideas oflandships and other armored vehicles. H. G. Wells, in his short storyThe Land Ironclads, published in The Strand Magazine inDecember 1903, described the use of large, armoured cross-countryvehicles, armed with cannon and machine guns, and equipped with

pedrail wheels[84]

Today

A number of ironclads have been preserved or reconstructed asmuseum ships.

Parts of USS Monitor have been recovered and are being

conserved and displayed at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VirginiaHMS Warrior is today a fully restored museum ship in Portsmouth, England.

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Huáscar is berthed at the port of Talcahuano, Chile, on display for visitors.

The City class ironclad USS Cairo is currently on display in Vicksburg, Mississippi.Northrop Grumman in Newport News constructed a full-scale replica of USS Monitor. The replica was

laid down in February 2005 and completed just two months later.[85]

The Dutch Ramtorenschip (Coastal ram) Zr. Ms. Buffel is currently under display in the Maritime

Museum Rotterdam.The Dutch Ramtorenschip (Coastal ram) Zr. Ms. Schorpioen is a museum ship at Den Helder.

The complete, recovered wooden hull of the CSS Neuse, a casemate ram ironclad, is on view in Kinston,North Carolina, and, in another part of town on the Neuse River, the recreated ship, named CSS Neuse

II, is nearly built and can be visited.The hull of the casemate ironclad CSS Jackson can be seen in the National Civil War Naval Museum atPort Columbus, Georgia.

The new United States Navy Zumwalt class guided missile destroyer has been described as bearing

resemblance to ironclads.[86]

Notes

1. ^ Hill, Richard. War at Sea in the Ironclad Age ISBN 0-304-35273-X; p. 17.

2. ^ Sondhaus, Lawrence. Naval Warfare 1815–1914 ISBN 0-415-21478-5, pp. 73–4.

3. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 86.

4. ̂a b Hill, War at Sea in the Ironclad Age p. 17.

5. ̂a b c Lambert, A. "The Screw Propellor Warship", in Gardiner Steam, Steel and Shellfire pp. 30–44.

6. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 37–41.

7. ^ Hill, War at Sea in the Ironclad Age p. 25.

8. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 58.

9. ^ Lambert, A. Battleships in Transition, Conway Maritime Press, London, 1984. ISBN 0-85177-315-X. pp.94–5.

10. ^ Baxter, The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship, p70 (http://books.google.com/books?id=rR95Mi7vVHoC&pg=PA82&dq=Lave+Tonnante+D%C3%A9vastation#PPA70,M1)

11. ̂a b Baxter, The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship, p72 (http://books.google.com/books?id=rR95Mi7vVHoC&pg=PA82&dq=Lave+Tonnante+D%C3%A9vastation#PPA72,M1)

12. ^ Batteries flottantes classe Dévastation (http://dossiersmarine.free.fr/fs_b_B1.html). Dorriers marine

13. ^ Baxter, The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship, p82 (http://books.google.com/books?id=rR95Mi7vVHoC&pg=PA82&dq=Lave+Tonnante+D%C3%A9vastation#PPA82,M1)

14. ̂a b c Lambert A. "Iron Hulls and Armour Plate"; Gardiner Steam, Steel and Shellfire pp. 47–55.

15. ^ Baxter, The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship, p84 (http://books.google.com/books?id=rR95Mi7vVHoC&pg=PA82&dq=Lave+Tonnante+D%C3%A9vastation#PPA84,M1)

16. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 61.

17. ̂a b Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 73–4.

18. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 74.

19. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 76.

20. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 77.

21. ^ Still, William "The American Civil War" in Gardiner Steam, Steel and Shellfire.

22. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 78.

23. ^ Preston, pp. 12–4.

24. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 78–81.

25. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 82.

26. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 85.

27. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 81.

28. ^ Angus Konstam, (2002), Union River Ironclad 1861-65, Osprey Publishing, New Vanguard 56, ISBN 978-1-84176-444-3

29. ̂a b c d Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 94–6.

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29. ̂a b c d Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 94–6.

30. ^ Hill, War at Sea in the Ironclad Age p. 35.

31. ^ Beeler, J. Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design, 1870–1881. London, Caxton, 2003. ISBN 1-84067-534-9 pp. 106–7.

32. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p. 107.

33. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p. 146.

34. ̂a b Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p. 71.

35. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 pp. 72–3.

36. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 pp. 73–5.

37. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p.77–8

38. ^ Brown, D.K. The Era of Uncertainty, in Steam Steel and Shellfire, p. 85.

39. ^ Roberts, J "Warships of Steel 1879–1889" in Gardiner Steam, Steel and Shellfire"

40. ^ The Royal Navy did build 18-inch (460 mm) guns for the Furious class battlecruisers, though these shipswere finished as aircraft carriers and their guns eventually fitted to the Lord Clive class monitor, seeing servicein World War I.

41. ̂a b c d e Campbell, J "Naval Armaments and Armour" in Gardiner Steam, Steel and Shellfire, pp. 158–69.

42. ^ Reed, Our Ironclad Ships p 4, 45-50, 68, 139, 217-221, 224-6, 228, 233.

43. ̂a b Conways's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 7-11, 118-9, 173, 267-8, 286-7, 301, 337-9, 389.

44. ̂a b Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 pp. 91–3.

45. ^ Noel, Gerard H U et al., The Gun, Ram and Torpedo, Manoeuvres and tactics of a Naval Battle of thePresent Day, 2nd Edition, pub Griffin 1885.

46. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 87.

47. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p. 122.

48. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 83.

49. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 156.

50. ^ Lambert Battleships in Transition, p. 19.

51. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 pp. 30–6.

52. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 pp. 32–3.

53. ^ Jenschura Jung & Mickel, Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, ISBN 0-85368-151-1.

54. ^ Gardiner, "Steam, Steel and Shellfire", p.96

55. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 pp. 37–41.

56. ^ Hill, War at Sea in the Ironclad Age p. 39.

57. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p. 45.

58. ̂a b Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 164–5.

59. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 166.

60. ^ Reed "Our Iron Clad Ships", pp. 45–7.

61. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 pp. 133–4.

62. ̂a b Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p. 54.

63. ^ Hill, War at Sea in the Ironclad Age p. 44.

64. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 111–2.

65. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 pp. 63–4.

66. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 pp. 57–62.

67. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 88.

68. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p. 194.

69. ^ Griffiths, D "Warship Machinery" in Gardiner Steam, Steel and Shellfire.

70. ^ Conway, All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905, Conway Maritime Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8317-0302-4.

71. ^ This term was still in use in the 1860s and 1970s for what we would now call 'battleships'. See Noel, GerardH U et al., The Gun, Ram and Torpedo, Manoeuvres and tactics of a Naval Battle of the Present Day, 2ndEdition, Griffin 1885.

72. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p. 204.

73. ^ Kennedy, Paul M. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, Macmillan Publishers, London, 1983. ISBN0-333-35094, pp. 178–9.

74. ^ Hill, War at Sea in the Ironclad Age p. 185.

75. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 101.

76. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 122–6.

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76. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 122–6.

77. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 187–91.

78. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 126–8 173–9.

79. ^ Historia naval del Perú. Tomo IV, Valdizán Gamio, José.

80. ^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 pp. 97–9, 127–32.

81. ^ Hill, War at Sea in the Ironclad Age p. 191.

82. ^ Beeler, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881 p. 154 states that HMS Edinburgh(1882) was the first British capital ship to be routinely called a battleship.

83. ^ Hill, War at Sea in the Ironclad Age p. 18.

84. ^ War and the Future by H.G. Wells, p.93 (http://books.google.com/books?id=whzXoavISBgC&pg=PA93)

85. ^ Northrop Grumman Newport News. "Northrop Grumman Employees Reconstruct History with USS MonitorReplica"(http://web.archive.org/web/20070219052656/http://www.nn.northropgrumman.com/news/2005/050226_news.html). Archived from the original (http://www.nn.northropgrumman.com/news/2005/050226_news.html) onFebruary 19, 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-21

86. ^ Mail Online. "The $7 billion dollar warship being built to maintain American naval supremacy over China inthe 21st Century" (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2128986/The-7-billion-dollar-warship-built-maintain-American-naval-supremacy-China-21st-Century.html). Retrieved 2013-02-25.

Bibliography

Eugène M. Koleśnik, Roger Chesneau, N. J. M. Campbell. Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships1860–1905. Conway Maritime Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8317-0302-4.

Archibald, EHH (1984). The Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy 1897–1984. Blandford. ISBN 0-7137-1348-8.Ballard, George, The Black Battlefleet. Naval Institute Press, 1980. ISBN 0-87021-924-3.

Baxter, James Phinney III (1933), The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship, Harvard UniversityPress, 1933.

Beeler, John, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881. Caxton, London,2003. ISBN 1-84067-534-9

Brown, DK (2003). Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Development 1860–1905. Caxton Editions.ISBN 1-84067-529-2.

Gardiner, Robert and Lambert, Andrew (2001). Steam, Steel and Shellfire: The Steam Warship,1815–1905. Book Sales. ISBN 0-7858-1413-2.Canney, Donald L The Old Steam Navy, The Ironclads, 1842–1885. Naval Institute Press, 1993

Greene, Jack and Massignani, Alessandro (1998). Ironclads At War. Combined Publishing. ISBN 0-938289-58-6.

Fuller, Howard J., Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power(Naval Institute Press, 2010)[1] (http://www.usni.org/store/books/civil-war/clad-iron)

Hill, Richard. War at Sea in the Ironclad Age, ISBN 0-304-35273-X.Jenschura Jung & Mickel, Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869–1946, ISBN 0-85368-151-1

Kennedy, Paul M. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. Macmillan, London, 1983. ISBN 0-333-35094-4.

Lambert, Andrew Battleships in Transition: The Creation of the Steam Battlefleet 1815–1860.Conway Maritime Press, London, 1984. ISBN 0-85177-315-X.

Lyon, David and Winfield, Rif: The Sail and Steam Navy List, 1815–1889, Chatham Publishing, 2004.ISBN 1-86176-032-9.Noel, Gerard et al., The Gun, Ram and Torpedo, Manoeuvres and tactics of a Naval Battle of the

Present Day, 2nd Edition, pub. Griffin 1885.Northrop Grumman Newport News, Northrop Grumman Employees Reconstruct History with USS

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_warship 21/21

Monitor Replica (http://www.nn.northropgrumman.com/news/2005/050226_news.html). Retrieved on

2007-05-21.

Reed, Edward J Our Ironclad Ships, their Qualities, Performance and Cost. John Murray, 1869.Sondhaus, Lawrence. Naval Warfare 1815–1914. Routledge, London, 2001. ISBN 0-415-21478-5.

Sandler, Stanley. Emergence of the Modern Capital Ship (Newark, Delaware) Associated UniversityPresses, 1979.

External links

The first ironclads 1859–1872, engravings (http://www.klaus-kramer.de/Schiff/Panzerschiffe/Panzerschiffe_1/Panzerschiffe_1_engl_top.html)Ironclads and Blockade Runners of the American Civil War

(http://www.wideopenwest.com/~jenkins/ironclads/ironclad.htm)Images and text on the USS Monitor (http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-m/monitor.htm)

The Spanish Navy Numancia, first ironclad warship to circumnavigate the world(http://www.revistanaval.com/armada/buques_marinablindada/numancia.htm)

Circular Iron-Clads in the Imperial Russian Navy(http://web.archive.org/web/20070927185849/http://www.bruzelius.info/nautica/Ships/Naval_Science(1874)_p1.html)

HMSWarrior.org (http://www.hmswarrior.org/)CSS Neuse II (http://www.cssneuseii.org/)

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